All posts tagged FA Cup

The FA Cup Final.

I’ve been a fan of Arsenal football club for as long as I can remember. My love for the club dates back to the early nineties. Way back in the day, I would watch (and record) the hour-long highlight show from the week that was in the English first division. And I fell in love with Arsenal. I fell hard. Their name, their kit, their larger-than-life cast of characters, their style of play with all the intricate passing, and jaw-dropping team goals. Before Arsene Wenger led the club to new heights. Heck, even before there was even an English Premier League. Arsenal has just always been my team for as long as I can remember.

Fast forward to the start of the 2014/15 season, and newly promoted Leceister City caught my attention. I still remember the piece NBCSN did on the newly promoted Foxes from “Lester.” And I thought if Arsenal were my top-of-the-table team, Leceister would be my relegation battle team. Leicester survived their first season back in the Premier League and then went on to become Premier League Champions during their unbelievably magical 2015/16 season. All of a sudden Leicester is my team competing for top-four finishes. Because in the meantime, Arsenal forced out their club legend manager, Arsene Wagner and is now somehow a middle of the table team.

Long story short, I’m a big fan of two football clubs.

Today, Leicester played in their fifth FA Cup final. They’d made the finals on four other occasions and lost all four, the last itme being during the 1968/69 season.

But today, the Foxes won their first-ever FA Cup by beating Chelsea 1-0 on a Youri Tielemans goal from 25 yards out. I collected a bunch of images from social media to commemorate the occasion…

It was an amazing match! It had a bit of everything… a banger of a goal from Youri Tielemans, an iconic save from Kasper Schmeichel, VAR controversary and most importantly, Leicester City lifting the Cup!

#FoxesNeverQuit 😀🦊⚽️🏆😍❤️

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by Thadd F. on May 15, 2021 • Permalink

Posted in Odd & Ends, Sports

Tagged 2021, As seen on TV, English Premier League, FA Cup, Leicester City, May, May15, Odds&Ends, Soccer, Sports

Posted by Thadd F. on May 15, 2021

https://tplusg.com/2021/05/15/the-fa-cup-final/

2020 FA Cup Final.

Today was the final of the FA Cup. My favorite club in the world, Arsenal were making their record 21st appearance in the FA Cup final. Arsenal are also holders of the record for FA Cup final wins at thirteen. They were playing London rivals, Chelsea in today’s final. At the end of last season, Chelsea demolished Arsenal 4-1 in the 2019 Europa League final in Baku, Azerbaijan. Hopefully, the match would go much better for the Gunners today…

Leading up to this year’s FA Cup Final, Arsenal America took a look back at all thirteen Arsenal teams that lifted the Cup and in the process became FA Cup legends! They started with the very first Gunner squad to lift the FA Cup in 1930…

And moved through all thirteen squads ending with the 2017 side…

There were some neat graphics and photos on social media leading up to the match…

The match was all knotted at the half…

A brace by Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang lead Arsenal past Chelsea…

With the FA Cup win, Arsenal booked their spot in next season’s Europa League. It will be the Gunners twenty-fourth consecutive season of European football. Mikel Arteta’s side finished eighth in the Premier League table. Their win knocks Wolves out of Europe next season and forces sixth-place finishers, Spuds into the Europa League qualifying round to play an extra three matches before the tournament properly commences. And that makes lifting the FA Cup trophy just a little bit sweeter…

I hope Aubameyang stays with Arsenal for a long time to come…

I’m so happy Mikel Artera is leading Arsenal now…

Best handshake ever…

Fourteen. Come on you Gunners! 😀🔴⚽️❤️

And I saw this graphic about Nicolas Pepe…

After a slow start, I think he’s going to be a really good one. #COYG

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by Thadd F. on August 1, 2020 • Permalink

Posted in #SUMMERinCINCY, Odd & Ends, Sports

Tagged 2020, Arsenal, Aug1, August, Cincinnati, FA Cup, Ffffound, Odds&Ends, Ohio, Premier League, Seen and noted, Sports

Posted by Thadd F. on August 1, 2020

https://tplusg.com/2020/08/01/2020-fa-cup-final/

A pretty good Saturday.

Good morning from Northside on this Saturday…

This morning we ran over to Lowe’s again to get more paint. After her success with painting our little half-bathroom, Genifer wanted to try painting our living room this weekend. While we were at Lowe’s, we also looked at some Pergo flooring for our third-floor bedroom. We really liked the color variations on this sample…

Pulling up the carpet on our third-floor and replacing it with wood might be our next, next project. After Lowe’s, we ran over to Kroger to get some groceries. They just had bee and sunflower balloons again today…

Have you ever tried Jack fruit? It looks like you’d get a lot of it for just $1.99…

I wonder if it’s any good? You know what IS good? These Ruffles chips…

Ohmigosh. They’re my new favorite! And this is the second time now that I’ve found them at Kroger! I was worried I would never find them again.

After we were done at Kroger, we stopped at Mad Llama for coffee…

When got home, Genifer started taping off the living room with painters tape…

And then she started priming,,,

And she did another really outstanding job with the primer…

And tomorrow she wants to paint the living room. She has a navy called Salty Dog that we think will look really nice in our living room. My job was to keep the dogs away from the paint while she was priming and tomorrow while she will be painting. And while she was priming, I got to watch the FA Cup semi-final between Manchester City and my Arsenal on ESPN+.

I don’t know why they relegated this match to ESPN+. They had a UFC behind-the-scenes show on ESPN and old X-Games highlights on ESPN2. It didn’t make much sense to me. But Arsenal defeated FA Cup holders Manchester City 2-0 to move onto the final at Wembley. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang scored both goals for the Gunners, finishing off an unbelievable 18-pass team move and then a swift counter-attack goal to finish off Manchester City. Come on you, Gunners!

Arsenal keeper Emi Martinez came up huge again for the Gunners especially with this save on City’s Riyad Mahrez. Watching the Mikel Arteta Bench Cam was also pretty entertaining. Arsenal’s head coach gets pretty animated on the sidelines. It’s been a week for The Arsenal. The Gunners beat newly-crowned Premier League champions Liverpool 2-1 on Wednesday and now FA Cup holders City 2-0 just three days later. Pretty darn unbelievable!

Arsenal will face Chelsea in the FA Cup final on August 1st…

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Chelsea beat Manchester United 3-1 in the other semi-final.

When the match was over and Genifer was done priming, we went out in the backyard with the dogs…

And while we were in the backyard, we fired up the grill…

First, we grilled some salmon burgers and chicken kabobs…

And then we grilled a couple of burgers and some jalapeno cheddar dogs…

The burgers were really good…

And the dogs were outstanding…

We’ve been buying this sweet Hawaiian bread at the grocery. Not King’s Hawaiian, but the Kroger equivalent. And I’ve been putting my hot dogs on that instead of buying hot dog buns too. It seemed like there were always hot dog buns leftover. The dogs taste awesome on the Hawaiian bread and now we don’t have a lot of extra hot dog buns going to waste. I think that’s what they call, a win-win.

This is Bear, the newest member of our family…

I like him. He’s fitting right into our family like he was meant to be here.

Good evening from Northside…

When we got home, we had some of this strawberry cake we got at the grocery…

It was really good. I’ve been on a strawberry kick lately. I can’t wait to see how our living room looks in its new Salty Dog blue…

When we got upstairs, we watched Louisville City lose 1-0 to St. Louis. And we watched more of the MLS is Back tournament. It was a pretty good Saturday. 😀🗓️❤️

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by Thadd F. on July 18, 2020 • Permalink

Posted in #SUMMERinCINCY, Northside, Odd & Ends, Suburbia

Posted by Thadd F. on July 18, 2020

https://tplusg.com/2020/07/18/a-pretty-good-saturday/

FA Cup Champions.

We watched The FA Cup final live from Wembley this afternoon on the telly. I was so happy that my Arsenal managed to down newly-crowned champions Chelsea. It was a long season for the Gunners. It was really nice to have it end on such a high note…

Amid all the turmoil this season, I’ve always been very much Wenger stay.

Since he took leadership of Arsenal in 1996, Arsene Wenger steered them to 3 Premier League titles, 7 FA Cups, 6 FA Community Shields and 21 straight Champions League appearances. His teams also set several English records: the longest win streak, the longest unbeaten run and the only 38 match season unbeaten.

I suppose there’s a chance that by getting rid of Arsene Wenger and making the change to another manager could reap more championships or maybe be more successful in the Champions League. But I think there’s a greater chance that the team would not be nearly as successful. I just don’t understand how people have been all upset by the club “only” lifting 16 trophies in the last 21 years. And how many other clubs would love to have a run of 21 consecutive top four finishes? I guess for some people nothing’s ever good enough. 😀 ⚽️ ❤️

UPDATE: Arsene Wenger has signed a new two-year deal! But he was told by Arsenal chiefs, “You must win major trophy in two years.” No pressure there. Ugh. 😬

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by Thadd F. on May 27, 2017 • Permalink

Posted in #SPRINGinCINCY, Sports

Tagged 2017, Arsenal, Cincinnati, FA Cup, Home Sweet Home, May, Northside, Ohio

Posted by Thadd F. on May 27, 2017

https://tplusg.com/2017/05/27/fa-cup-champions/